Economic (and financial crisis) links

[erudito]

UK study finds that having and raising children is the main reason for male-female pay disparity.

Best letter from a (former) hedge fund manager ever.

Back in July 2007, historian Niall Ferguson gave a strikingly prescient lecture. Thoughtful analysis of how the credit crisis arose.

How the British response was better than the American to the

Comments

Re: male-female pay disparity

[erudito]

That is a messy one to tease out. To take your example, child care/kindergarten teaching is competing against free provision and does not tap directly into large income streams, unlike corporate training.

There is not nothing going on there, but more is going on that simply "the valuation we put on" various jobs.

Re: male-female pay disparity

[catsidhe]

“competing against free provision”

... in what sense? Mothers-at-home? In which case there is no ‘provision of service’, because the service is to allow the mother to get out of the house (whether to get to a job, or to have some rest). If you mean that grandparents and playdates are competing, then ... kind of.

If you mean that ABC is being competed against by Council Childcare, then emphatically no, Council Childcare is paid for by parents, is subsidised by the ratepayers (and in most cases happily so), and is still so restricted in what they can provide that they are universally full to the gills. There is a lot of slack which private providers can take. That some of those might still be empty is evidence that they screwed up their planning and business (they set up in an area with few children, or they have such a reputation that no-one will trust their children to them, for example, both of which I have heard attributed to ABC). They screwed up, and if subsidised Council places are doing better, then that is because the Council

Re: male-female pay disparity

[erudito]

Families making their own (non-commercial) arrangement is an alternative form of provision which is not charged for in the market place. Including simply not working. So child care is competing with free provision in a quite direct sense.

There are all sorts of reasons families may not wish to do that, but it still provides a benchmark alternative which limits how much one can charge for childcare.

[mimdancer]

I had a female manager when I was working in Westpac who was earning high $30k. Her male counterpart in the next dept. over was doing the same type of job (as back office work goes) and he was earning low $40K. She was married with a young child but was working full time. He was single working full time.

What do you think?

Background

[erudito]

Without knowing more about Westpac's salary arrangements it is hard to say. From memory, there is some evidence that women do not bargain as hard as men on pay. There might also be some other trade-off going on.

Re: Background

[catsidhe]

Mim wasn't exactly high up the food chain, and neither, relatively speaking, was her boss. (high $30k? That's, what, HEW4ish level?)

This was not at a career level where it was really possible to ‘bargain on pay’. There certainly wasn't a meaningful difference in type or amount of work, from what Mim says.

How hard is it to make some first approximations?

Re: Background

[erudito]

Since it is illegal in Oz to discriminate by gender on pay levels it is very unlikely that they were paid differently on the explicit grounds that one was male and the other female.

Given that is the background legal situation, either they had negotiated individual contracts or it was some rule-based system. They might have had an annual increment system. They might have had some "menu-ing" (i.e. choosing of different side benefits). Really, one has to know more to make a reasonable judgement.